Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

The Good
Here's a game with a tough act to follow: Baldur's Gate 1 was a super-mega-hit, made D&D cool again and became one of the biggest names in the rpg revolution so... How can you make a good sequel to that? The answer is twofold.

For starters the designers took the effective but not that revolutionary "brute force" approach to making a sequel which means they just jammed down your throat 10 times as much features. The new gameworld (moved south of Baldur's Gate around the city of Amn) is 4534536 times bigger with much more varied locations including underwater cities, elven citadels, planar spheres and even the Underdark among the collection of usual temples, dungeons and cities that populate Faerûn. The adventure has also been moved up level-wise, with +3 weapons being now a common occurrence and with enemies such as Beholders, Demi-Lyches and even dragons to fight against instead of the same old lvl 2 kobolds, the spell book has been upgraded to around 300 spells, and the character classes now support character "kits" which work like subclasses with special skills and weaknesses that add a lot of neat twists to the game.

All that plus new features like double-weapon wielding, interface fixes and a more accurate gameplay balance, for instance: thievery is now much more of a requirement and it even awards exp. points when successful. Mages can now cast spell triggers and contigencies making them much more resourceful in combat, in BG1 mages where useless fodder that could be dispossed of easily, now mages are devastating powerhouses that require equally skilled party members capable of casting spell turnings and stuff like that! And that's without mentioning the magical creatures like the vampires, beholders or dragons! Result? It's not enough to have a group of head-crushing fighters anymore, and true variety is much more necessary when considering party development. And speaking of party members, that's the only figure that seems to have dropped: 16 against the 32 or so of the original. But the drop in quantity is acceptable considering that much more dedication has been placed on each character and his/her particular background and storyline. Don't worry tough, along with the new party members you can still find your favorite BG1 characters back: Imoen (much more mature and with a dark secret and all), Jaheira (now single!), Edwyn and my personal favorites: the dimwitted Minsc and bad grrrrrrl Viconia. The characters have dropped that annoying tendency to come in pairs but they still converse with each other and can get into heated arguments and fights if they don't see eye to eye.

In short it's BG bigger, badder, with better graphics (there are even some polygonal elements here and there plus higher resolution options!) and more hours (upwards of 200) of gameplay. Enough to make a cool sequel right? But as I said the answer from the designers was twofold, and the other big improvement they made was really simple: Scripting.

Taking a lot of cues from previous Black Isle games like Torment and Fallout, BG2 forgave to a degree the freeform element of the original and crafted a much tighter world where no enemy is randomly spawned (aside from the obligatory but scarce chance encounters), each NPC has custom dialogues, each quest is meticulously crafted and every possible party member comes with their own scripted events and gets tied to the storyline appropiately. And the most impressive thing is that all these rather ambitious goals are kept for the entire adventure! It still boggles my mind that at no point in the game the quests fall in quality and every little nuance seems controlled by small scripted events, be it a run-in with some spies, a need for money, or some of the miriads of character-related quests that develop each party member Final Fantasy-style and tells us more about their backgrounds; or the class-related quests that provide you with a unique base of operations, quests, sub-plots and steady income depending on your character class; or the romance-scripted events and sub-plots; or the consideration provided by the designers to include small fandom-related touches such as self-parody, D&D cameos by Elminster, Dritz, the kids from the D&D show and enough self-references to the original to satisfy the most jaded fanatic (ever wondered what happened to that character? Practically every character from the original can be found in some form or another here!) ; or the optional challenges like hunting the pieces of a super-powerful hammer, defeating the dragons, assembling a sinister armor made of flesh, destroying Kangaxx, etc,etc,etc,etc,etc....

And still I repeat: at no time does the quality nor the quantity of the game take a dive. One might also think that with such priorities the storyline would decay and end up an inconsistent mess with little to no direction and with as much development as a Street Fighter storyline, but the fact is that the storyline benefits from the tighter scripting and actually soars above the original, exploring further the consequences of your demonic heritage and weaving a larger and more complex plot that interweaves most major players in Faerûn as well as most of the characters you meet in the game instead of being a series of subplots holding up a basic storyline like in other games. Granted, it's not as story-driven as Torment or some console rpgs, but it's still way up there.

The Bad
The ending is blatantly shitty, made for the exact purpose of leaving you with pretty much no answers and prompting you to buy the expansion... and some of the features that everyone wanted (such as knowing what the hell happened to each party member) got kicked over to said expansion...oh well, more BG can't be so bad....

Oh yeah and the final fight with Irenicus was a joke. Quite odd considering there are plenty of difficult challenges in the game and that the final showdown with Sarevok on the original was a veritable nightmare.

And what the hell happened to the spell effects? After Torment and it's screen-shaking, over the top spell effects I expected BG2 to be a super spectacle of magic spells!! Yet....

The Bottom Line
This is one bad ass rpg, one would expect such a massive game to be simply a freeform mess (Morrowind) or such a tightly written and scripted game to be a linear interactive movie (insert any console rpg here) but only Baldur's Gate 2 manages to reach both goals and remain solid.

Required gaming for any crpg wanna-be and gaming enthusiast, Baldur's Gate 2 is simply a masterpiece of videogaming.

The Good
Even though I had heard somewhat of how to play D&D in the past, my parents and others warned me away from it as it was "a tool of Satan." Well, they can forget that, because BG2 is a gift from God, it seems.

Even without my extensive knowledge of D&D's character creation and battle system, I eased into both quickly, and I feel like I know them well.

Graphics: Great! I especially liked how they drew little Boo (chaotic good hamster ranger; my favorite non-humanoid character) in with Minsc (chaotic good human ranger; my favorite male humanoid character).

Sound: Again, awesome. The music does not limit itself to just one selection for battle, nor one for travel; they change when you enter different areas. And your character's voices have so much appeal ("Go for the eyes, Boo, GO FOR THE EYES! YAAAA!" SQUEEEEK from Minsc) and pretty much anything Aerie says (Lawful good, elven (Avariel) mage/cleric; my favorite female humanoid character).

Gameplay: Pretty much what I expected from D&D, which is to say DEEP, involving and addictive. There are dozens and dozens of things to do in the game, so many that at some points you may feel swamped! That is a Good Thing(tm) though, as you never EVER have a shortage of quests.

The Bad
I don't see anything wrong so far (for anyone who knows what the Boo I'm talking about, I'm in Spellhold after... the meeting with Irenicus).

The Bottom Line
An awesome game, simply awesome. If that is, you have the time to sit down and play it, which unfortunately with school and all, I don't have much :( I wish I could play it more.

The Good
When I first installed Baldur's Gate II, it's difficult to explain how excited I was. By this time, I considered BG1 to be the most interesting computer game of all time, and I guess I could enumerate few more people who said the same. Obviously, sequel of any kind was highly desired. And again, Interplay/BioWare has not let me down.

First, the massive number of quests. Player rarely finds himself wandering with no apparent reason. There are no "empty" locations in this game. On every map we can find some interesting NPCs, some unique items and, of course, quests.

New monsters. BG2 offers you beasts we desire to slay - dragons of various kinds. Although very difficult to kill, battle with them is really a great fun. But there are other interesting monsters one of which is an exceptionally strong lich Kangaxx. The battles are also balanced. Players starts with characters on 7-9lv (highest experience level available in first part of game) and approaches far more difficult monsters than those in BG1.

Graphics is another magnificent element of Baldur's Gate II. Although the game still uses Infinity engine, the quality of locations, characters and spells has increased. We can also use higher resolutions, unofficially to 1600x1200.

The Bad
There are few, serious flaws, which make the game worse, then BG1.

First one is the overwhelming number of sidequests. Sure, it is the essence of the game no to roam freely in pointless locations, but to solve mysteries, rescue princesses, kill dragons etc. But at some point we are thrown into situation, when we enter a new location to complete one quest and before we meet the NPC we want to talk to, we encounter three other characters, each one asks us for a favour. Then, we are suddenly given few other new quests when we try to complete one of those three new. At some point, player gets really confused.

"Empty" locations is another problem. We all remember those woods, mountains, fields etc. which filled the map between Candlekeep and Friendly Arm Inn or between Beregost and Nashkel. There was nothing interesting in there - just some pointless dialogues or pseudo-quests like saving a dog. But it was this pointlessness that made these woods interesting. Player never knew what lures there - it could be a pack of wolves or perhaps a really interesting quest. And if we were in a hurry, we could just rush to the opposite side of the screen and ignore everything else. Perhaps it was a waste of time, but at least we had a choice. In BG2 every location has its purpose. I really could use some "fresh air" and listen to the wind while traveling through bushes and woods. Too bad I can't find it here.

Another disadvantage - experience level. In BG1 we start our adventure with dagger and 10 gold coins. Band of 10 kobolds is a lethal threat to our party. Later, we become stronger, but our strength is reasonable. In BG2 we fight dragons and demi-liches. In Throne of Baal we battle demons and it is Elminster himself that wants to get out of our way. Isn't it a bit too much? Doesn't player become epic? I guess that's too much just for a game.

The Bottom Line
You want a very good RPG game? You like D&D? You want to see some nice story, not just massacre on the screen? Go get yourself this game!

Just keep in mind that nothing is perfect and so is BG2, especially if you are familiar with its prequel.